How to Take Your Inbox to Zero

Is a flooded inbox a daily nightmare? Here are some tips and tricks to keeping your inbox neat, tidy and even (gasp!) completely empty!

Great artists steal!I keep my inbox super clean with an email management system invented by Andreas Klinger. Follow her method and take your inbox to zero pretty quickly. How? Andreas views emails as to-dos as tasks and because of that, helps you to filter them into manageable to-do lists by category and urgency. I highly recommend taking an hour out of your day to follow her tutorial and start to filter your emails according to her GTD (Getting Things Done) Approach. Here’s how she does it.

At minimum, stop using your email as your to-do list and rely on other resources like Google Keep, Teux Deux or Todoist, or the countless other options out there.

Insert canned responses.Canned responses are email responses you can use over and over again. In many cases, we can use these as a basis for emails we send daily, modifying them slightly as needed. These are very simple to set-up and can be a real time-saver.

Limit time spent in your inbox. The more time you spend in your inbox, the more activity you’ll stir up inside of it. Remember, your inbox is not a mobile phone and doesn’t produce text messages. While you should produce prompt replies, the expectation to do as quickly as on text isn’t the same. Limit time in your inbox to around 2 to 3 times a day, when you have quality time to dedicate to it. Reply to the most urgent emails before moving on to those that are not as high on your priority list.

Unsubscribe to pesky emails. We all have subscriptions to emails that simply clutter our inbox. The ones that we just can never seem to hit “unsubscribe” to for one reason or the other. While you’re on your “inbox to zero” mission, unsubscribe away! It feels so good. Bonus points for being proactive and deciding not to subscribe to those pesky email newsletters in the first place.

How have you managed to take your inbox to zero? Let us know in the comments section below!

Heather Sakai is the Arsenal Manager here at Go Media, home of the world's best mockup templates, vectors, textures and other must-have design weaponry. She also serves as the Event Director at Weapons of Mass Creation Fest. Heather is proud to work for the most passionate creative agency in the universe, the best in Cleveland Web Design, custom branding and print.